Committed to Education and Support for a Brighter Future

Chajul, Quiche, Guatemala

Comprometida con la Educación y Desarrollo para un brillante futuro

Excelencia

Compromiso social

El respeto por la naturaleza y diversidad cultural

Equidad de género

About AMACHAJUL

We are a non-profit, apolitical Association, formed from the town of Chajul and different villages and hamlets of the Maya population, located in the Ixil region of northern Guatemala. We improve the quality of life for the Maya community and generate job opportunities through different projects and gender equality.

Our main activities focus on Education, Agriculture, Tourism Promotion, Handicrafts, Health and Food, with the purpose of improving the economy of the Mayan population of the lower class and generating opportunities for men and women of different Mayan ethnicity.

Purpose

Improve the quality of life for the Maya community and generate job opportunities through different projects and gender equality.

Train professional men and women, Mayan entrepreneurs of peasant families, responsible, honest, able to generate, innovate, apply techniques and technologies to increase sustainability by optimizing agricultural production, tourism that is a source of social and economic development , maintaining a cultural tradition through crafts, and contributing to food security, education and health.

Support cultural and agricultural education with quality that achieves national basic and diversified requirements and achieve effective oral and written bilingualism so that students know and value their own culture.

Objectives: Promote an intercultural bilingual education to all the indigenous populations of the State who attend the basic and diversified education, as well as promote the value that diversity represents a wealth to the State and nation.

Optimize the use of the human, material and financial resources.

Ensure opportunities for access, permanence and school completion at different levels: secondary and diversified, for the Maya speakers.

Diversify and make more flexible educational services according to the needs and characteristics of the different groups of the population focused on young people who have disabilities and those who are in a situation of poverty.

Twenty four scholarship students attend public 7th grade evening school. The AMACHAJUL Education Casa provides enrichment, internet, tutoring and vocational skills training to the Maya Ixil Chajul scholars and for the Bridge Academy held during school vacations. Monthly Parent Education meetings are attended by parents of the scholarship students.

AMAChajul. Bright Star Philanthropy Partnersand ADPGUA collaborated to provide a Mother’s Day celebration for 350 mothers and their young children who are not attending school.

A clown show, traditional Ixil dances, surprises, basket gifts for the mothers, frisbees and other toys for the children, songs and games made for a celebration enjoyed by 350 mothers and their young children who would not have been able to participate in other Mother’s Day celebrations. A nutritious drink and snack were provided for all the mothers, children and performers.

Clean up community activity and workshop on nutritious foods and recipes with a shared meal

Science and Critical Thinking Workshop

Chess Club for Boys and Girls

Bottle Gardens

Organic compost bottle gardens at the Education Casa require careful watering and maintenance. Each student is responsible for their own bottle garden success. Seeds were provided by Seeds Programs International

Preventing Teen Pregnancy and Life Planning Workshop

The Chajul NGO Friendly Spaces and a Peace Corp teacher sponsored this workshop on Life Planning and Preventing Teen Pregnancies. The parents strongly supported this workshop for the twenty four Maya Ixil Chajul scholars at the Education Casa.

Maya Ixil Scholars Ak Tenamit Vocational Boarding School.

All Five FIRST GIRLS Scholars successfully completed 8 courses in the first quarter.

The Maya Ixil Mobile Classroom is supported by Bright Star Philanthropy Partners.The mobile classroom is a van that transports the girls, a teacher, and male chaperone on the 15 hour trip to and from Chajul and Ak Tenamit. Topics taught include safety at banos and bus stops, navigating the city, what to do if you are separated from the group, what to do in an emergency, where to eat and what to order from a menu, how to pay for your food, planning and making a budget for nutritious meals, with a stop at a market to practice safety, selecting and paying for food and clothing.

Maya Ixil Ak Tenamit Scholars, teacher and chaperone on the river dock in front of the girls’ dorm at the vocational boarding school Ak Tenamit, Guatemala. The scholarships are sponsored by AMAChajul

Find out about AMAChajul’s exciting partnership with Blue Sky Stewardship,Montanain the next Blog. Plans are underway for a Blue Sky Chajul ORCHARD. You will want to know about how you can sponsor a fruit tree in our new Fruit Trees Support Scholars opportunity.

ECO -Volunteer where Ak Tenamit students do their Internships in Tourism.

The RIOS FUND, GUATEMALA ECO-VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: You can change the world, live in beautiful riverside lodge and work with the Q’eqchí Maya to help them escape extreme poverty and protect their stunning rainforest valley. Teach English to Mayan students, study Spanish with our teacher trainees or bring your unique experience to help any way you can.

Only a few girls finish 6th grade. We have sacrificed to provide an education for our Daughters to finish grade 6. Our Daughters have a passion to go to middle school. Our families are very poor and cannot pay for the tuition, travel and school supplies.

Parents and girls met with the Maya Ixil Education Committee to ask if they could help us go to school. We want to study. We want to learn new skills. A plan was made for Girl Gardens Grow Scholars to raise money to pay for tuition and provide food for us and our families.

VEGETABLES GIVE LIVELIHOOD

Gardens start a cycle of self-sufficiency. Healthy harvests give food to eat and sell to help pay for scholarships.

Challenge

The deep poverty and high malnutrition rates in the Ixil Maya region of Guatemala results in large numbers of migrant youth who try to cross the Mexico/US border in search of work to help their families. Girls are especially vulnerable to kidnapping, rape and sex trafficking. The alternative for many poor young girls is to become a child bride.

Maya Ixil families do not have the money to pay for tuition for their girls to attend school. $50 pays for tuition and supplies for a full school year at the local Public Evening School.

Girl Gardens Grow Scholarshipsin vertical Gardens with recycled plastic bottles and worm compost enriched soil. We thank our partner donors for your support. You are in our prayers every day. Please help us pay for tuition, supplies and travel to Middle school Girl Gardens Grow Scholarships. click to donate to Maya Ixil Scholarships

Vertical Bottle Garden to raise seedlings in compost

vertical Bottle Garden to start seedlings

Chess Club

YOUNG WOMEN from the remote mountain villages of Chel and Chajul, Guatemala are Maya Ixil Scholars at Ak Tenamit Vocational Boarding School. They are FIRST GIRLS. It is a challenge to be a FIRST GIRL Please partner with courage for these young women with a donation at

Maya Ixil Scholarships ♥♥ Educate the Girls

Together we can have a better future and not continue to suffer from extreme poverty. Together we can change our stories to one of hope, improved every day life and prosperity for ourselves, our families and our beloved communities.

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“We are happy to achieve the goal but the truth is that it is a new experience and takes a lot of courage to be living this dream.” “We are Maya Ixil. Our home and community is Chajul, el Quiche, Guatemala. We are childhood friends who started planning for a farmers’ co-op when we were 8 years old.”

“We are now 34. Our dream was born in the year that we sat by the river bank, in a high mountain jungle, and started our planning with how to survive the armed conflict raging in our home town, and for a way to get enough food for children and old people. Our childhood dreams for the farmers’ association for Maya Ixil are now a reality.

In 2011 Manuel Laynez Anay, started the organizational work of forming a non-profit association for economic improvement, to eliminate malnutrition in the Ixil area of Guatemala, support well- being, and create job opportunities in the Maya Ixil region. They wanted to create opportunities that their parents did not have. As young people their parents were organized with a similar vision, but armed conflict prevented their achievement. They were afraid to follow their dream. They were forced from their lands where they had worked and harvested a variety of agricultural products by the fear of being beheaded, burned, hanged, shot or in every sense of the word, massacred. They fled to the jungle mountains to hide, all as a result of the internal armed conflict. One misfortune of all this is that there were many young orphans without schooling and no government support and nongovernmental organizations to support the people.

Manuel Laynez Anay’s father was killed in the genocide massacres.

DREAMS OF MEMORIES

Laurie Levinger, retired social worker living and writing in Vermont, between her travels to Guatemala and Spain. Laurie’s website has information about her other books, videos, and on-line testimonies. Laurie’s website

Guerra inconclusa: La voz de los sobrevivientes (Unfinished War: The Voice of the Survivors) by Laurie Levinger is a book of testimonies published in Guatemala in September 2015 (in Spanish). The book is a collection of 30 verbatim testimonies from 2005–2013. Guatemalans from many different parts of the country, from different language groups and of different ages contributed their personal stories. The book is in Spanish and is available by emailing the publisher Editorial Maya Na’oj:Sr Daniel Much, mayanaoj@gmail.com In December 2015 books can be ordered by emailing laurie levinger: laurie@levinger.net